If you’re a faithful player of Battlefield 3, you may have noticed something happening this week: Official EA and DICE multiplayer servers seem to be vanishing.

Do a check for online multiplayer games for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Battlefield 3, and you’ll see that official servers have all but disappeared. Instead, multiplayer is now relying on private servers—which players can rent from EA for $30 a month.

It isn’t hard to come to a possible conclusion: EA has seen a lot of money coming in from the private server rental, so they see the ability to save money by no longer running official servers.

In fact, a few days ago on Reddit, there was an “Ask Me Anything” session with DICE community manager Daniel Matros, and he made some very interesting comments that relate to all of this:

Why are there no official DICE servers anymore? Now all that is around are the rented servers.
There is only so much physical space and digital space where you can have servers. The community requested an RSP programme and we delivered.

Is the removal of the Dice/EA servers permanent? The Rent-a-Servers all suck and have ridiculous settings.
Everything in the wonderful world of Battlefield is dynamic :)

On Twitter today, member Ryan Flower asked the official Battlefield account where the DICE PS3 servers went, and he got this response:

“We’re currently looking into this, thanks for your patience! ^AS”

So, the question is this: Is this an internal error that has taken down the servers, or has EA indeed made the decision to pull them in favor of player-supported servers? If that’s the case, is it really a good idea to have no official servers to compliment the player servers?

What do you think about all of this? Let us know in the comments below.

Eric L. Patterson got started via self-publishing game-related fanzines in junior high, and now has one goal in life: making sure EGM has as much coverage of niche Japanese games as can realistically be crammed in. Eric’s also active in the gaming community on a personal level, being an outspoken voice on topics such as equality in gaming and consumer rights. Stalk Eric on Twitter: @Eric_EGM. Meet the rest of the crew.